Lost in the System: A Mother’s Frustrating Journey Through Japan’s Education Expenses

From the standpoint of not being able to receive educational expenses

Please forgive me for being self-talking.
I’m an early 50’s mother.

Hello

I once attended the third-ranked public high school in the area.

The majority were preparatory schools for entering university, and the curriculum was in line with that.

However, when I entered high school, my parents

“I don’t have the money to go to university, so if you really want to go to university, only apply to national universities that you can attend from home. Never go to a private university.”

I am the eldest of three siblings and am in this situation.
I thought I knew the age at which my children would go to higher education, but I didn’t seem to have any savings. (I don’t know the details)

I think it would be difficult to have three children…

My parents both graduated from high school and both had vocational degrees.
After graduating, the two each worked for well-known companies.

My father was a technical employee without a title until retirement, and my mother worked part-time at various places after getting married, except during maternity leave.

(Even though I’m well over 70 years old, I still work for a living and as a hobby.)

There must have been a decent income.

I think it’s amazing that I gave birth to and raised three children while working.

If both of us were working, we would have had a decent income…

However, my father has been in a situation of “not having money when it matters most” for a long time, and it seems that he was supporting his siblings’ families who were in trouble, and my mother was afraid to spend money on her own hobbies and fashion. obsessed with.

Your father is a wonderful person.

I guess my mother worked hard because she wanted to use it.

When I was in elementary school, my homeroom teacher would sometimes gently hand me a brown envelope and say, “For Mom.”
It was a notice that school lunch expenses were not paid. Even though she was a child, she was embarrassed and insisted that she was paying the bills, even though she repeatedly protested to her mother. It was sad.

…It’s probably not so much that you can’t pay for school lunches.

This may be due to a hidden weakness.

When I take university entrance exams, I can’t go to a cram school, they don’t give me money to buy reference books, and in any case, I can’t pay for university tuition. If you decide to go, just borrow a scholarship from home and go to a national university.

I worked part-time between classes and club activities, paid the club fees (I had to pay for lessons with an outside coach), looked at reference books recommended by friends who were good at studying, bought a few books, and started correspondence courses. The best I can do is take just one subject.

I asked my friends to teach me how to study.
In order to qualify for a scholarship from the Japan Scholarship Foundation (at the time), I researched it myself, submitted the documents, and went to the interview by myself.

In my day, there was a system where if you became a civil servant or a teacher and worked for a number of years, you would be exempt from repaying your scholarship loan, so I decided to pursue a career as a teacher.

When it was time to take the entrance exam, I told my mother that I wanted to use the New Year’s gift that she had entrusted to me since I was little to pay for my tuition, and she said, “I don’t have that anymore. I spent it all on you guys.” It was a shock.

…That’s a shock.

I thought I was saving money, but it’s sad.

In the end, I was not able to get into a national university that I could commute to from home.
Fortunately, I was only accepted to a national vocational school that existed at the time and had cheap tuition, so I went there (I paid the tuition by working part-time) and after graduation, I got a job.
I actually had a career that I wanted to pursue, and I wanted to enjoy my university life like everyone else. I also wanted to meet many new people.

Even after I got a job, I still didn’t have enough money to pay for my younger siblings’ school fees because I didn’t have money when it was important, and my mother was asking me for money.
When things got really bad, I would receive a phone call at work on payday or bonus day, and I would be persistently asked how much money I had received.

He seemed dissatisfied and said, “What the hell?” when the price was not what he expected.

My mother had the same reaction.

I was deciding what I would buy with my daughter’s bonus.

Well, my mother was the eldest daughter herself, so she went to work early to raise money for her younger sisters’ school fees and send money back to their parents.

Maybe that’s what the child thought he would do.

Despite complaining, he ended up borrowing money from me to pay his tuition fees.
Even remembering it now makes me cry.

Borrow it? I wonder if he gave it back to me.

Because I was raised by parents like this, I saved up money so that my children wouldn’t have to worry about money, and told them to go to any university they wanted.

I understand!

Aside from other things, I also became a teacher in order to pay for the school fees.

My older child is in the second year of his master’s degree at a private university, has secured a job, and has finished paying his tuition, while my younger child is in his second year at a private university, and it looks like he will be able to pay his remaining two years of tuition without delay.

There are many reasons why you may not be able to save money for your education.

The couple were repaying their own scholarships.

You may not be able to work as much as you would like due to poor health,

Even if you are healthy, you may not be able to work because you have to take care of your parents.

I think there are various reasons.

I was an only child, so I managed to do something about it, but if I had three children, I don’t think it would have been possible for them all to be like Ichiro.

No matter how hard you try and save, there is a limit.

Regardless of the fact that I couldn’t save it.

What to do next, how to raise funds, and how to repay the loan afterwards

If you haven’t thought about it yet, I recommend that you and your child think about it carefully and try a simulation.

It is said that there are people who passed the exam with the help of Baidu Touch.

Click here for the rumored beckoning cat